Chapter 10 – Abrupt Change

“You’re on edge today.”

“Not sleeping.”

My hands were jittery due to the lack of sleep, and there was absolutely nothing that pissed me off more than something that could affect my aim.  Caffeine made it even worse.  I was also ticked off at the dirt on my jeans, which I got courtesy of my shrink’s car.  As I walked past it, I managed to bump the fender, which was covered in mud – just like the rest of the Land Rover.  I’d seen the vehicle before but never all muddy and figured the driver usually got their car washed during their lunch hour; my appointment had been moved up from the afternoon when I usually saw Mark.

I considered putting a bullet in the tires until I looked at the license plate that read “ID V EGO” and realized it had to be Mark’s.  There was also a toolbox on the passenger seat containing a bunch of those Habitat for Humanity fliers.

“I thought you had been doing better on that front.”

I glanced up at him and scowled at his choice of words.  His expression told me he hadn’t realized what type of metaphor he had used.

“I was,” I stated bluntly, “and now I’m not.”

“What changed?”

My eyes dropped back to the area rug and its swirly, uninteresting patterns.  My eyes followed a blue swirl around a green one.  Did I really want to go into this with him?  Did I want to tell him how apparently my pathetic, empty self had developed the need to share his bed with a hooker – not for the sex but for the sleep?

Did I want to tell him she left me?

How does a whore get the option anyway?

A shiver went through my body, my stomach clenched, and I tasted bile in the back of my throat.

“What’s her name?”

“She’s no one,” I replied.

“Yet you have someone in mind when I ask the question,” Mark said.  “That pretty much makes her a someone.”

I glared at him again.

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

“What do I think?”

“She’s not a girlfriend or anything.  She just…slept with me.”

He paused and tapped his pen against his wrist before jotting something down.

“A prostitute?”

“Yeah.”  I clenched my hands into fists a couple of times to try to get rid of the shaking.  I couldn’t have been much worse off if I had been going through the DTs.  “She’d stay overnight with me, and it helped to have someone else there.  The dreams weren’t as bad.”

Saying it out loud made it sound even more pathetic.

“And she’s no longer in the picture?”

“She’s not.”

“What happened to her?”

I ran my hand over the top of my head, mildly annoyed with myself for needing a haircut.  I took in a long breath and figured it couldn’t really make it any worse to tell him.

“I took her out, showed her a great time, fed her waffles, and then at the end of the night, when everything seemed to be going great, she took off.”

“Why did she leave?”

“I have no idea.”

“Seems like you missed some details in there somewhere.”

“I don’t miss details,” I snapped.

“Apparently, you do.”

The tension in my body had to be noticeable to Mark as I glared at him.  I could almost see the crosshair on his forehead and figured I’d try a more mental shot than a physical one.

“You do a shit load of charity work,” I told him.  “You aren’t married now but you were once, or at least engaged.  No kids.  You drive a Land Rover, and you like off-roading on the weekends.  You probably tried to get into the military, but because of your foot, you didn’t qualify for active service, and you used it as an excuse to go to school.  Your dad probably hated the idea of you becoming a shrink, which is why you don’t speak anymore.”

Trying to keep my breaths calm, I stared at him as he opened and closed his mouth a few times.  Eventually, he cringed a bit and found his tongue.

“Evan, have you been…spying on me?”

“No,” I snapped.  “You told me all of it, just not with your mouth.  Don’t ever think I miss the details.”

It took him several minutes, but he eventually gathered his wits about himself again and continued on.

“I meant you might be missing some of the…nuances of female behavior.”

“She was having a good time,” I said.  “I know how to tell when a chick is happy.”

“And then…what?” Mark asked.  “You are obviously observant, so tell me what you saw.”

My tongue ran over my lips as I conjured up images of Bridgett running across the park and away from me.  Playing the whole scene in reverse, I brought myself back to the dog park and her back pressed to my chest.

“I told her…I told her none of this shit was serious,” I paraphrased.  “She already knew that.”

“She wanted more.”

My eyes moved from the rug to his face, and I stared at him for a long moment before shaking my head and returning my gaze to the swirly patterns.

“There isn’t anything else.”

“You don’t think you have anything to offer a woman?”

“I don’t think anything I have to offer a woman is in her best interest.  Seriously, you’ve got a better idea of how…of what I’ve…of what happened.  How could I ever try to explain that to a date?”

“Lots of people deal with PTSD every day, Evan,” he reminded me.  “You don’t do too badly for yourself.  I know working under the table isn’t ideal, but at least you’re not a criminal, right?”

I tried not to actually laugh.

“Tell me one thing,” Mark said as the session ended and I got up to leave, “how did you know about my father?”

“Your jackets don’t fit right.”

“What?”

I took a long, deep breath.

“You’re fine in jeans and polos, but whenever I see you wearing a button down shirt, dress pants, or a jacket, they’re wrinkled and they don’t fit right.  Rich kids get taught that shit.  You’re a blue-collar guy.”

“You still haven’t said anything about my father.”

I rolled my eyes.

“No blue-collar guy goes into a white-collar profession without pissing off his dad.”

Mark laughed, and I took the opportunity to get the hell out before he asked me anything else.  Besides, I had a little side trip I wanted to take, and I needed to do something first.

I grabbed my phone out of my back pocket.

“Hey, Nick,” I said when he answered.

“Hey there!” Nick replied.

“Am I interrupting anything?” I asked.

“Nah,” he replied.  “I’m just hanging out, shootin’ the shit with some buddies.  What’s up with you?”

“Just wondering…”  I paused, suddenly unsure how to even ask.

“You still there?”

“Yeah.”  I cleared my throat.  “I was just wondering…what’s the best way to apologize to a chick?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Nick replied.  “You gotta go down on her.”

“Don’t I have to get her to speak to me first?”

“It helps!” Nick laughed.

“So, how do I get her to talk to me again?”

“Just do something nice for her,” Nick replied.  “It doesn’t even matter what, ‘cause guys never do anything nice for chicks, so anything works.  That’s why the flower business is so good.”

“So, buy her fucking flowers?  That’s it?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Or one of those fancy vibrators.”

Yeah – not gonna happen.

“I dunno.”  I leaned back and stared up at the cloudy sky.  “Flowers seem kind of…cliché.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Nick said.  “They work.”

I couldn’t argue with him, so I stopped at a florist shop and wondered what kind of flowers said whatever it was I wanted to say.  There were too many varieties – too many colors to choose from to actually come up with something that looked right.  They all looked right.  They all looked wrong, too.  I couldn’t think of any words to put on the card, either.  Maybe the basics were best.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

I’m just a fucked up hit man,

And nothing rhymes with that.

It was entirely possible that poetry was not my strong point.

Whatever I did, I’m sorry.

Sorry.

SORRY.

The ridiculously simplistic note I left on top of the skewed sheets covering the worn out, twin-sized bed in Arizona fluttered down and landed at the forefront of my mind, mocking me.  If there was anything I knew, I knew that I wasn’t any good at this kind of shit.

I left the flower shop, ripped four daffodils out of the window box on someone’s deck, and drove myself over to Bridgett’s corner.  Traffic was heavy since it was still the tail end of rush hour, but I was patient as I crawled along with the other travelers.  I still wasn’t sure what I should say, so I let different scenarios clamber around in my head while I waited for people and cars to get the fuck out of the way.

Once I reached the right corner, I saw Melvin, the pimp, leaning over the car in front of mine.  My eyes scanned the area, but there wasn’t any sign of Bridgett.

“Hey, baby.  How about some sweet stuff?”

I recognized Candy as she swayed around from the back of my car and up to my window.  She leaned over enough to put her tits in my face and asked what all she could do for me.  She didn’t seem to know where Bridgett was, though.

“Haven’t seen her since the day before yesterday,” the girl said.  “She’s got a regular john, so that’s not so unusual.”

Yeah, maybe – except I was the regular john.

“Where’s she stay when she’s not here?”

I had to give the whore fifty dollars to talk, which she slipped inside her shirt while watching Melvin out of the corner of her eye.  I figured out what building Bridgett lived in by Candy’s description, and it only took a minute to drive there.

There was only street parking, so I drove around the block twice before I found a spot.  The sky was pretty much dark by the time I pushed open the door, found her apartment number on the mailbox, and went down a handful of stairs to the lower level units.  I looked down at the daffodils in my hand and wondered just how ridiculous I was – apologizing to the chick I paid to fuck me – but I needed to sleep before I went completely over the edge.

I knocked.

I had to physically force myself to not tap my toe on the ground, stare at my watch, or start whistling.  There was no way I was going to pull off any kind of casual encounter anyway – it was obvious what I was here to do.  The daffodils kind of gave it away.

I knocked again.

There was that distinct feeling moving slowly up the sides of my spine that I had rarely felt outside of combat.  It was a completely irrational knowing that came from nothing other than gut instinct, but it had served me many times in the past.

It was a gut instinct I trusted.

My mind and the memories within took over for a moment, and I felt the dry, stale heat of the desert air around me.  It had been mid-summer in the desert, and the heat was absolutely unbearable.  I had walked around the corner of a small building to reach just a bit of shade to relax a moment and take a piss when it all started.

One hand had touched the wall of the building as I leaned against it, while the other loosened my fatigues and pulled out my dick.  There had been a noise from the other side of the building that I couldn’t identify – something that didn’t sound quite right.  The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

There was something very, very wrong.  I was sure of it.

“Bridgett?” I called as I brought myself out of the memory and banged harder against the door.  “Bridgett – open the fucking door!”

Still no answer.

I didn’t think – I just leaned back and kicked the handle.  I had to kick twice before the shitty lock splintered the weak wooden doorjamb and the apartment was open to me.

I took everything in.

It was a small place – one room efficiency with a small cubby bathroom off to the side.  There was a little half window with a view of a brick wall.  It wouldn’t have let any light in at any time of day and was probably too small for the fire marshal to allow without some kind of bribe involved.  The stove looked like it might have worked well in the seventies, and the fridge was one of those half-sized ones you find in college dorm rooms.

Despite the size, the room was neat and orderly.  Everything seemed to have its place, including a small shelf with books and an aloe plant, a box for mail, and a small candle.  No pictures – none at all.  There wasn’t much in the way of furniture – just a card table with four plastic chairs, the book shelf, and a futon along one wall.  It wasn’t pulled out into a bed, though there was a body lying across it.

I knew she wasn’t dead – there was no tell-tale smell of death, and the slight rise and fall of her shoulder made it obvious.  Her back was to me, but I didn’t need to see her face to know she was unconscious.  The lack of reaction to having her door kicked in was evidence enough that she wasn’t just asleep.  Hesitating only slightly, I moved across the room and knelt next to the futon.

With my hand on her shoulder, I pulled her body towards me.  The black and blue bruises that covered her face and shoulders were maybe a day and a half old, not much more than that.  There was a cut over her lip, and her chin was streaked with blood.

As I pulled her closer to me, her arm fell away, and I could see the bruising on the rest of her naked body.  Clear hand prints in purple circled her wrists, and the circular bruises on her thighs were clearly fist marks.  The scent of stale semen on her was unmistakable.

“Bridgett?” I said and felt her jerk in my arms.  My hand touched the side of her face where she wasn’t bruised.  “Open your eyes.”

They fluttered at my order, and the lids parted.  Her expression quickly moved from fear, to shock, and then to sadness.  Sobs began to shake her body as her forehead pressed against my shoulder.

“Evan,” she croaked.  Her voice didn’t sound right – it was rough and scratchy.  I tilted my head to get a better look at her neck and saw the finger-shaped bruises there as well.

“Can you hold on to me?”

Her fingers gripped my shoulder as I wrapped the sheet back around her and lifted her up into my arms.  I held her against my chest as I walked out the door, crushing the dropped daffodils as I left.  I got a few looks from the bums on the street as I carried her off and lay her down in the passenger seat of my car, but no one said anything or tried to stop me.  I was carrying a beat up girl, naked and wrapped in a sheet, and no one cared.

Nice fucking neighborhood.

Back at my apartment, I was a little more concerned.  Since I was in the parking garage, it was easy enough to get to the elevator without anyone laying eyes on me or what I was carrying, but being in the elevator had me on edge until we got to my floor.  Luckily, there was no one else around.  The elevator doors opened, and I glanced quickly down the hall before carrying her to my apartment.

I dropped the sheet in the hallway, figuring I’d come back in a bit and throw it out.  It stank of sweat, beer, and semen.

“I’m going to get you cleaned up, okay?” I said as I carried her through the bedroom door and into the master bathroom.  “Can you stand on your own?”

I took off my jacket but couldn’t seem to get my shirt unbuttoned while I kept Bridgett from falling, so I ended up taking her into the shower with my clothes still on.  She kept her arms wrapped around my neck as I filled my palms with liquid soap and ran them over her skin.

When I washed between her legs, she flinched and started crying again.  I ended up holding her for a minute, not having any idea what I was supposed to do.  Eventually, she steadied enough for me to finish.

Once she was rinsed, I stood her on the bathmat and tried to dry her off, but it wasn’t easy with one hand holding her up.

“I can do it,” she said with a scratchy voice.

I steadied her as she ran the towel around and then rubbed at her hair.

“Do you…um…do you have a hairbrush?”

I laughed and ran my hand over my closely cropped hair.

“I guess you wouldn’t, huh?”  She smiled a little, but it seemed to hurt her busted lip.

She sat on a towel at the edge of my bed, wrapped up in my robe as she ran her fingers through the strands of brown hair.  Her hair was a lot darker when it was wet, and I tried to force thoughts of another woman from my head for a while, but it didn’t really work.

It never did.

I peeled off my wet clothes and hung them over the shower door.  Once I was dry, I pulled on some clean ones and grabbed my phone.

“I could use a little help at my place,” I said into the phone.

“You get shot?” the voice on the other end asked immediately.

Franklyn Johnson might have been a doctor once, and he might not have been.  No one ever called him Doc or anything like that – just Franklyn.  Still, he knew how to take a bullet out of a leg, stitch people up, and do a lot of other emergency room kinds of procedures.  He did stuff like that when Rinaldo’s people were hurt, and a hospital visit would end up causing questions.

He wasn’t expecting a beat up hooker at my place.

“She’s been through the wringer,” Franklyn said when he left the bedroom.  He reached up behind his head and scratched at the overgrown, graying mop there, which reminded me of Christopher Lloyd’s character from Taxi.  “I sedated her and gave her a morning after pill, but there isn’t much else I can do.”

“Anything more serious?”

“What, aside from the multiple rapes?  What else do you think she needs?”

His eyes shot daggers.

“I found her, asshole,” I growled, and his look towards me softened a bit.

“Nothing permanent,” he finally said.  “Well, not on the outside.  I doubt she’ll ever be the same on the inside.  No broken bones, no internal bleeding.  Dehydrated a bit – make sure you get some more water in her when she wakes up.”

He left, and I went back inside to see how she was doing.  She was asleep, and Odin was right there beside the bed, watching her.

“Are you finally going to make yourself useful as a guard dog?” I asked him.

He sneezed and then peered up at me through curly white hair.

“She’ll be okay,” I informed him, though I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to do so.  Odin dropped down on the floor next to the bed, and I moved around to the other side to get in.

As soon as I lay down, the exhaustion hit me.  My mind didn’t race from one horrific image to another but focused on the sweet scent of the woman beside me.  I reached out and carefully wrapped my arms around her, making sure I didn’t cause additional pain.

With Bridgett nestled against me, I finally got some sleep.

*****

It was hours after I woke up when Bridgett finally came down from the sedative, but she fell back asleep almost immediately afterwards.  I made her drink some water before she dozed off again and then just watched her for a while.  When she woke up the second time, she seemed a little better, even with her black eye and bruised cheek.

“Do you know who it was?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Was he a regular john?  Someone you’d seen before?  Can you describe him?  Or…um…them?”

Again, she said nothing.

I watched her carefully as the edge of her eye constricted a little, and her lips pressed together tighter.  She knew who it was – she definitely knew.  Why wouldn’t she tell me?

There was really only one possible answer.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” I asked.  “That pimp of yours.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly.

I brushed a bit of hair off her forehead and was pissed off at her reflexive flinch from my touch.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” I pressed.  “Who else?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly.  “I never saw them before.”

I shoved myself off the bed, found a pair of jeans, and hauled them up over my hips.

“Evan, what are you doing?”

I didn’t answer.  I grabbed a T-shirt out of the drawer and pulled it on over my head.  My boots went on my feet without socks, and I didn’t even bother with my watch or anything like that.  This was going to be a short trip.

“Evan!” Bridgett called out.

I glanced back to see her sitting up in the bed, her bruised face making her nearly unrecognizable from the girl I was used to seeing there.  Before she could say anything else, I walked out of the bedroom and out the door.

I could hear her calling my name and telling me to stop, but I ignored her.

The pimp was easy enough to find – right there on the street corner with his bitches all around him.  He reached into a car window, pulled out some cash, and then shoved one of the girls in the backseat.  There were at least three guys in the car, and they drove off with a screech of tires.

My fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and my teeth ground together.  There wasn’t any actual parking on the street, and I wasn’t about to go find a garage, so I pulled right up over the curb and onto the sidewalk.  I got out of the car, leaving it running, and headed right for him.

“Mister Arden!”

Ignoring his words, I walked up to him quickly, grabbed him by the collection of gold chains around his neck, and shoved him backwards into the alley.  Two of the girls started screaming, and a blonde one grabbed my arm.  I flung my fist backwards, and she hit the sidewalk with a grunt and her heels in the air.

Melvin the pimp clawed at my hand, drawing blood.  It didn’t even register in my head that I was bleeding – I was far too focused on getting him off the street where we could have a little private moment.  The most convenient place was the alley right next to his usual hangout, so that was where I dragged him.

I stepped around a foul-smelling puddle next to a dumpster and shoved Melvin up against the brick wall on the other side.  He gasped and grabbed at his throat.

“Mister Arden,” he croaked.

“Do you think being polite is going to help you right now?” I asked calmly.

Moving forward, I pushed my forearm across his neck, pinning him to the bricks and partially cutting off his air supply.  Again he clawed at my skin, but I just leaned forward and stared him in the eye until he stopped struggling.

“You scratched my car,” I said quietly as I stared into his widened eyes.  “Maybe it was a rental car, but you still scratched it.  Now when I drive it, it just won’t quite be the same.”

I used my free hand to punch him in the face.

“I-I-I…” he stammered.  “I didn’t touch your car!”

I shook my head slowly at the asshole’s ignorance and then punched him in the gut twice.  He struggled to breathe as I shoved him up against the wall again.  His skull knocked against it, and his eyes rolled for a moment before he could focus again.

“Okay!  Okay!  You mean that bitch…that girl of mine you like – Bridgett.”

“Aren’t you clever?” I replied coldly.

“I thought you were done with her!” he exclaimed.  “You hadn’t been around…she’s been acting up and not bringing in her worth, ya know?”

“I have no idea,” I said, “but I know little boys who don’t take care of their toys end up losing them.”

“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I didn’t know…I didn’t know you still wanted her…”

I stopped listening to his blather.  My hand reached behind to pull my piece from the back of my jeans, but it wasn’t there.

I’d left so quickly, I hadn’t even taken a gun.

Mario was pretty good at beating people to death when it needed to be done.  There were several ways – collapsing the trachea could do it, and you could always punch someone in the head enough to cause brain damage.  I could have strangled him as well, but that took a lot longer than it looked like in the movies.

If someone were to ask, I’d probably admit to being a lazy killer.

“You have a piece on you?” I asked.

He blathered nonsensically until I punched him in the face again, busting his nose and spraying my shirt with his blood.

“I said, do you have a gun on you?”

“Y-y-yes!” he cried.  “It’s on my right ankle!”

“Raise your leg up,” I instructed.

He obeyed, and I kept a good grip across his neck and chest with one arm while reaching for his pistol with the other.  I pulled it out and put it in his face.

“You don’t take care of your things,” I told him bluntly.  “I don’t think you deserve to have them.”

“It was just business!” he cried out.  “They paid good money!”

“Oh yeah?” I asked.  “How much?”

“A grand for an hour!” he told me.  “You pay that for the whole night!  You can have her right now – all night!  No cost!”

I hummed and tilted my head to one side, lowering the gun a bit.

“Yeah, all right,” I agreed.  “I think I will take her tonight, no cost to me.  Tomorrow, too.”

“Anything you want!” he promised with a quick nod of his head.  Sweat poured from his temples and down his neck.

“I think she’s gonna keep the money from that last trick, too.”

His brow creased, and for a moment he looked like he was going to argue.  He thought better of it, though, and agreed with me.

“Whatever you want, Mister Arden,” he said.  “She can have it.”

I nodded.

“Whatever I want, huh?”

“Anything!” he confirmed.

I nodded again.

“Okay.”  I raised the gun, kicked back the safety, and blew his brains into the bricks.

Several feminine screams came from behind me, but they were lost in my own personal disgust at the blood and tissue that sprayed back at me.  I hated close range shots like this – as if that actor dude hadn’t been bad enough.  At least I had the manhole cover as a shield then.  I hadn’t thought enough about this one to avoid the mess, and I hated the mess.  I needed to kill someone from a distance again.  All this up close and personal shit didn’t settle well with me.

I tore off the bottom of his shirt as I let him fall to the ground and used a bit of it to wipe off my face.  It was better than nothing, but only barely.  I threw the torn cloth to the side, skipped back around the puddle, and headed out of the alley past the hysterical whores.

One of them grabbed at me like she was going to be able to do something to stop what had already happened.  I looked her in the eye, and she stepped back away quickly.  Running around to the other side of the car, I jumped into the driver’s seat and sped off without another word.

Bridgett was still lying on her side in my bed when I returned.  Our eyes met, and I knew she had been crying.  I didn’t understand that, though.  I didn’t understand why she would cry for that shithead of a pimp.

I glanced down at my blood-covered hands and shirt.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I said quietly.

Her eyes watched me, but she said nothing.  I took off my bloody clothing and dropped it on the bathroom floor before stepping into the shower.  I hoped it would clear my head a little, but it didn’t work.  I was just as tense as I had been before, and my head was full of…of…what was this?

Confusion?

My stomach was uneasy, and not from the blood that washed down the drain.  There was a bizarre feeling of near-guilt, but that wasn’t quite right either.  I didn’t regret killing that asshole.  I never regretted anything, so I didn’t know what this feeling was.

I guess that made it confusion.

Since Bridgett still had my robe, I walked over to the dresser naked, pulled on a clean pair of boxers, and then climbed into bed beside her.  She didn’t move to look at me when I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my chest, but she didn’t resist, either.  I lay my head just above hers on the pillow, inhaled the scent of her hair, and pressed my lips to her temple.

“You killed him,” Bridgett whispered, “didn’t you?”

My fingers trailed up her arm, over her shoulder, and to her lips.  I didn’t press down because of the cut there, but still made the point.

“Shh,” I replied.

She turned then, and her red-rimmed, black-and-blue eyes turned to mine.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you kill him?”

I raised an eyebrow at her.  I wasn’t going to answer a question when I had already refused to admit there was anything she could ask about anyway.

“What am I going to do?”  Bridgett’s voice cracked as her hand moved to cover her mouth.  “I can’t be on the street with no protection!”

“Carry a gun,” I suggested.

“I’ve never even fired one!” she exclaimed.

“Then find another pimp,” I said.  It occurred to me that I could teach her to shoot, but making this about more than the sex had already caused an issue once.  I didn’t want to do that again.  “That isn’t the only street corner in the city, you know.  You probably don’t even have to go anywhere – some other dude will come up and take over the girls there.”

“What about the other girls?”

“I don’t really give a shit about the other girls,” I said.

She glared at me.

“What if the new guy is one of the ones from across town?” she asked quietly.  “The ones over by the warehouses.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“You don’t work for the fucking competition,” I snarled.

“What competition?” she asked with feigned innocence.  “You don’t seem to actually have a job.”

A couple hundred potential rebuttals went through my brain, but I knew when I was being baited.  I also knew when a situation was likely to escalate quickly, and silence was the best way to combat it.  We watched each other for a full two minutes before she sighed and put her head down on my shoulder.

“What am I going to do?” she asked again.  “Even that apartment is in Melvin’s name.”

“I got some money for you,” I said.  I hadn’t actually taken any cash from Melvin, but she didn’t have to know that.  I had twenty or thirty grand lying around in the back of my closet.  “You already earned it.”

“I’m not taking your money,” she said.

I took her chin in my hand.

“First off, you will take the fucking money because it’s yours, not mine.  It’s the money from those fucking bastards who hurt you.  Secondly, if I decide to give you fucking money, you’re going to fucking take it.”

“Fucking am I?”

I tried to scowl, but she grinned at me.

“You can earn that money, too,” I said.  “As soon as you’re up for it.  You don’t even have to have any other clients.”

She gave me a strange look, like she wondered what the hell I was suggesting.  I wondered myself until I heard it come out of my mouth.

“Just stay here,” I said.

So much for keeping it only about the sex.

Immediately, the atmosphere between us changed, electrified, and heated the air.  Bridgett’s tongue darted over her cut lip as she processed what I had said.

“You want me to…what?” she asked.  “Stay here and be your personal whore?”

I paused, thought about it, and decided that yes – that was exactly what I was suggesting.  It made sense, in a way.  She was here often enough before, and she wouldn’t have to worry about bills and food – just fucking me.  That way, it was still just about the sex.

More than anything, I’d sleep better if she was here every night, and I couldn’t help but see that as a positive thing.

I looked in her eyes.

“Stay here,” I said again.  “No bills, no pimp, no worries.”

“You’re asking me to move in with you.”

I hadn’t quite thought of it like that.

“I’m saying, instead of me picking you up on some other street corner, you just stay here, and I can fuck you whenever.”

“You can’t be serious.”

I watched her look at me and saw the last thing I wanted to see – the desperate need for it to be true.  She wanted it.  She wanted to stay here – to live with me – not because it was convenient, but just because she wanted to.

“It doesn’t change anything,” I told her.  “This is still what it is.”

“You don’t even try for anything else,” she said quietly.

She was right, of course.  I didn’t.

I wouldn’t, and I won’t – ever.

My fingers moved a strand of her hair away from the bruise around her eye.

“I don’t have anything else to give you, Bridgett,” I told her.  “This is all there is.”

There was just no way to make it something it wasn’t.